How did the British Empire grow?
The Anglo-Saxons, Germanic tribes, entered Britain from the Angle
between modern Germany and Denmark after the Romans withdrew
their troops. They expanded their area of settlement from the
footholds or bridgeheads of the first period, gradually settling
in the whole of England. The language changed from Celtic to
Germanic. By stages the kingdoms they set up amalgamated and
were absorbed into the kingdom of Wessex. After defeating Norsemen
- mostly Danes from the same area the Angles had come from -
Wessex became the only kingdom and was renamed England.

After they were invaded by Frenchified Norsemen (1066) the
next conquest was in Ireland. The landless
second sons of French-speaking Norman barons crossed the
Irish Sea and joined in the conflicts of the Irish kings, setting
up new Norman lordships - feudal estates - where the main languages
spoken were probably Norman French and Irish Gaelic. However,
king Henry the second invaded Ireland
in 1171 and claimed it for the English crown (with the authorisation
of the only English Pope, Nicholas Breakspear (Hadrian the fourth),
who wished to bring the Irish church under Papal control). Thus Ireland was the first
state that could be regarded as an English colony. In the same
period other Normans conquered large parts of southern Italy and
Sicily. Was it their habits of conquest that eventually led to the Empire? The techniques used in Ireland in the numerous wars there were employed in other areas of the world.

A similar process occurred in Palestine where the Crusaders set up European feudal states in
the area they had conquered from the Arabs (or the Turkish states) - but these were mostly French.

The Angevin Empire in France
The Norman kings were succeeded by the Angevin or Plantagenet
family when Henry the second came to the throne in 1155. As he
was also the owner of several feudal domains in France he actually
controlled more land there than the French king. However, most of this
was lost by his son John (except for the Channel Islands and Aquitaine). Later attempts to conquer
France, with a claim to the French throne in 1337, were the Hundred
Years War. However, all the lands that were conquered in this
war were lost, and the last English foothold was Calais, lost
by Queen Mary in 1558.

Companies
The British Empire was not built by government action. Instead
it grew from chartered companies. These were given a Royal Charter
to trade in certain areas as a monopoly, in return for taxes
paid to the Crown. The earliest of these were the Merchants of
the Staple - the woollen industry that traded with Flanders in
the medieval period, and was the main source of England's wealth
in those days. Later there were the Merchant Venturers. In the
time of Queen Mary (1555) was the Muscovy Company to trade with Russia. The
most successful was the East India Company (1600) which grew
into the government of India, only being replaced by a colonial
government in 1857.

But there were other Companies of this kind. The Hudson's
Bay Company was the ruler of large parts of what became the Dominion
of Canada. The British South Africa Company was Cecil Rhodes's
vehicle for developing Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe and Zambia). There
was also an Imperial British East Africa Company that was influential
in developing Kenya and opening up Uganda before being replaced
by direct rule from the Colonial Office.

Notoriously, the South Sea Company provoked an early stock
market Bubble and Crash in the 18th century.

To those who experienced the activities of these Companies
they might have seemed like very big and well organised Pirate
Bands. But for the mainly younger sons of country gentlemen and
the aristocracy the Companies were the road either to riches
or death - much the same as what had happened in the Crusades.

In the 18th century the East India Company was the largest
business in London and was an important source of government
revenue. People who ask 'how did the Empire grow?' should study
the details of the history of this company - often known as "John
Company". It employed thousands of people, owned hundreds
of ships, and operated in many parts of the world, from St Helena in the west to China in the east.
It started at Surat in Gujerat in India and various depots in
Indonesia. It traded spices, cotton cloth, tea and coffee, both
of which it introduced to the world markets. It was the Company's
tea that sparked off the revolt in north America that led to
the setting up of the United States.

In India it became a government, taking over the lands of
the Mogul Empire as that empire declined - partly because it
had to fight the Company's troops. It founded cities: Calcutta
(Kolkata), Singapore and Hong Kong. It ruled in Aden (South Yemen)
and had influence in the Persian Gulf.

It may have been the model for all later Joint Stock companies
(shareholder owned corporations), which shared its financial
structure, and also its lack of ethics.

John
Keay - History of the Honourable East India Companyessential reading for the details
of how the Company came to rule India

When Elizabeth took the throne in 1558,
Dee became her trusted advisor on astrological and scientific
matters, choosing Elizabeth's coronation date himself. From the
1550s through the 1570s, he served as an advisor to England's
voyages of discovery, providing technical assistance in navigation
and ideological backing in the creation of a "British
Empire", a term that he was the first to use. Dee wrote
a letter to William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley in October 1574
seeking patronage. He claimed to have occult knowledge of treasure
on the Welsh Marches, and of ancient valuable manuscripts kept
at Wigmore Castle, knowing that the Lord Treasurer's ancestors
came from this area.[15] In 1577, Dee published General and Rare
Memorials pertayning to the Perfect Arte of Navigation, a work
that set out his vision of a maritime empire and asserted English
territorial claims on the New World. Dee was acquainted with
Humphrey Gilbert and was close to Sir Philip Sidney and his circle.[14]
endquote

references in Wikipedia

John Dee is a very controversial figure as he believed
in "magic" more than science at a period when what
we regard as modern science had not yet separated from astrology
and alchemy.(See Frances Yates - Rosicrucian Enlightenment).

In the preface to this he announced
the intended publication of the first terrestrial globe made
in England by Emery Molyneux. Between 1598 and 1600 appeared
the final, reconstructed and greatly enlarged edition of The
Principal Navigations, Voiages, Traffiques and Discoueries of
the English Nation in three volumes. In the dedication of the
second volume (1599) to his patron, Sir Robert Cecil, he strongly
urged the minister as to the expediency of colonizing Virginia.
A few copies of this monumental work contain a map of great rarity,
the first on the Mercator projection made in England according
to the true principles laid down by Edward Wright. Hakluyt's
great collection has been called "the Prose Epic of the
modern English nation" by historian James Anthony Froude.

Hakluyt was also an investor in the East India Company, thus
was one of the founders of the British Empire as it became.

Does this mean the British Empire can be said to have been
a project of a small group of people in the time of Queen Elizabeth?
This of course makes us think about the nature of historical change and how events come about.

The Queen did invest in the voyages of captains like Francis
Drake and Walter Raleigh - whose activities from the point of
view of Spain were piratical.

The First British Empire
After Ireland the next major expansion was to America. In the
16th century English people began to settle on the northeast
coast of North America (Newfoundland, now part of Canada). In
1583 Queen Elizabeth claimed the Sovereignty for the English Crown. That
is, by a form of words they annexed the land without regard for
the people living there at the time. This procedure, which must
seem to us now rather bizarre (and illegal under International
Law), led to the whole Empire being considered the property of
the English (and later the British) Crown. It had first been
used in Ireland.

Some of the settlers hoped to practice their religion without
interference from the royal government and church (not the same
as looking for Religious Freedom for others, which most of them
opposed). Others wanted to farm new land and escape from the
landowners in England. Merchants hoped to make money from trade.
Others, especially in the 17th and 18th centuries, were deported
criminals. The result was a series of colonies along the eastern
coast of what is now the United States and Canada.

After the union with Scotland,
Scottish people also settled in these colonies and the Empire
could be described as British.

The American colonies were a mixture of Royal and Proprietorial
colonies. That is, some of the Governors were appointed by the
Crown; others by Proprietors. The second type was a 17th century
version of the feudalism
that had occurred in Ireland. The King granted land to his favourites
as a cheap way of paying them. In all those colonies local assemblies
developed which disputed powers with the Governors - the earliest
stage of the evolution that resulted in democracy and independence.
There was no civil service appointed from Britain other than
customs officers and Navy and Army. Until 1768 the colonies were
part of the responsibilities of the Secretary of State of the
Home Department. There was no government colonial office in London
responsible only for the colonies. However, from 1768 there was
a Secretary of State for the American colonies - a bit late in
the day - abolished in 1782.

The Royal Navy became essential to maintain connections with
the colonies and was the main instrument of government connecting
them. But the American colonists built civilian ships for trading
along the coast and to hunt for whales in all the world's oceans.
They also traded with the East India Company.

The end of the Seven Years war (1756-1763), and the defeat
of France in north America, seemed to make the American empire
secure. However, the desire of the British government to tax
the colonists to pay for their defense caused a tax revolt, that
grew into a demand for independence. The colonists used the slogan
of the English Civil War - No Taxation without Representation
- and the ideas of political scientists: Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu.
The subsequent war resulted in the formation of the United States,
leaving only the nucleus of what was to become Canada.

At the same time as the north American colonies were being
settled, English people settled in the Caribbean and developed slave-worked sugar
plantations (see Barbados
for a useful book on the history of sugar). The profits from
these helped fund the industrial revolution and the huge country
houses built by the owners of the plantations (see the novels
of Jane Austen, especially Mansfield Park) - and paid for the
navy and army that defeated Napoleon.

The Second British Empire
After the independence of the United States the British continued
to rule Canada,
including the former French settlements in Quebec and the Caribbean Islands.

When Charles the second married Catherine of Braganza (a Portuguese
princess) in 1662 her dowry included the Portuguese colony in
India of Bombay
(now Mumbai) (and also Tangier, now part of Morocco but
this colony remained British only from 1662 until 1684 when the
Moroccans made it untenable - see Linda Colley). The formation
of the East India Company began the British influence
in India, which started with trade in 1613 at Surat in Gujerat.
The custom then was to build a fortified trading center known
as a Factory, with soldiers to protect the merchants. They recruited
local people as soldiers. Gradually the Company treated these
bases as sovereign
territory - though in every case their occupancy was based on
a permission from a local ruler. In the northeast of India the
Company founded the city of Calcutta (now Kolkata), and occupied
Madras (Chennai). From these bases they spread their power into
the lands of the decaying Mogul Empire. The East India Company
changed from being just a trading company to being partly a government.
Added to its profit from buying and selling were the taxes it
collected, in theory on behalf of the local rulers, in practice
for its own benefit.

The managers and governors of the Company made huge sums of
money (those that survived the diseases of India) and built palaces
in England. This money too was available to invest in the new
industries in England.

The area of India ruled by the company expanded as the Company's
armies (Indian and British soldiers, commanded by British officers)
conquered Indian kingdoms and provinces. The French were trying
to do the same but were outmaneuvered until, as in Canada, they
were confined to a token colony, at Pondicherry, on the close
of the Seven Years War.

A revolt in 1857 by Indian soldiers against the Company's
rule (sparked off by new cartridges, rumored to be greased with
pig and beef fat - offensive to Muslim and Hindu soldiers, respectively)
led to an attempted uprising (war of resistance) and the British
government's taking over the Company's land as a formal British
colony. A British Governor General was appointed with his capital
in Calcutta, and subsidiary governors in the provinces. The revolt
was suppressed with great brutality - what would now be considered
war crimes on a huge scale.

After Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli declared Queen Victoria
Empress of India (successor to the Mogul Emperors, whose office
was terminated after the Revolt - Indian Mutiny or War of Independence),
the governor was renamed Viceroy and moved from Calcutta to Delhi,
formerly the seat of the Mogul emperor.

The Indian empire had to be supplied by sea. This led to a
series of Company bases along the route to India. One of these
was at the southern tip of Africa where Cape Town and its surrounding land was taken
from the Dutch (who were also building an empire, in Indonesia).
After the Suez Canal was built in Egypt the Canal Zone was a British base to
protect it and Egypt itself became a protectorate, and Aden at the southern tip of Arabia was a fueling
point for steam ships passing from Suez to India and a Naval
base for patrolling the Red Sea and Indian Ocean. To protect
Aden a protectorate was declared over the surrounding area, which
became the Aden Protectorate (south Yemen). The government of
India was also interested in keeping order in the borders of
India. To the west they exercised control over both shores of
the Arabian Gulf, Baluchistan to the north and Trucial Oman to the south. To the north they
attempted to control the fringe states of Bhutan, Nepal, Sikkim
and Afghanistan. The last was never conquered (but Cricket has
been taken up by the people).

To the east British conquest extended into Burma, a kingdom of people with a different
culture and language. To the southeast the East India Company
also extended to Singapore,
where a trading post was built that became a city, like Calcutta.
From here British traders extended to the island of Borneo where
two colonies were formed in the north: one the quasi-feudal state
of Sarawak, ruled by the so-called White Rajahs of the Brooks
family on behalf of the Sultan of Brunei, the other North Borneo
(now Sabah). North of Singapore the British came to rule the
Malayan peninsula
(called the Straits Settlements at that time). This area was
important for tin mines and later for rubber.

China was not
formally ruled as a colony but British and other European traders
forced immunity from Chinese courts and controlled such governmental
functions as the Customs and
the navigation on the Yangtse. The Opium trade and wars undermined the
Chinese state (but China as a whole was never a British colony).

Why didn't the British do to China what they
had done to India?

India
When the British arrived India was in theory unified - at
least the northern parts - under the Mogul emperors, in Delhi.
In practice the emperors had lost control of the provinces which
were in reality more or less independent under the governors
supposedly appointed by the emperor.

Beginning with Bengal the Company's forces displaced the Nawabs
(governors) one province at a time. In the absence of a central
government the Indians were unable to resist the encroachments
of the British and the French. We can remember that the Britons had not
been united against the Romans when Rome invaded ancient Britain, nor the Romano-Britons
against the Anglo-Saxons.

China
China remained a unified state under a functioning government.
While it is true that its technology was stagnant in the face
of the European developments - such as in Naval warfare - the
central government did not lose control of the provinces until
the late 19th century.

The Company never tried to rule any part of China (except
Hong Kong and Weihaiwei) but wanted to trade, especially with Opium which it
provided via a number of middlemen (some of them the ancestors
of modern "respectable" companies such as Jardine Matheson).

Australasia
After the independence of the United States it was no longer
possible to send criminals into exile in North America. To continue
the policy a new destination was needed. The chosen destination
was Botany Bay (Sydney) in what became known as New South Wales
in Australia.
The whole continent was declared British land. The inhabitants
were ignored as though they were animals (the land was declared
"terra nullius" = belonging to no-one and therefore
free for settlement). Like North America this was a colony of
settlement rather than merely of rule and exploitation, as in
India.

New
Zealand was also seen as a colony of settlement, though of
free workers rather than convicts. Wars against the native Polynesians
resulted in conquest and parcelling out of the land to mainly
British farmers.

Africa
The empire in Africa started as slave trading depots in Ghana
(Gold Coast) and other parts of the West African coast. Then when Britain ended
its slave trade - having become rich enough from industry to do without its
profits - there was a need for bases for the Naval patrols trying
to prevent other countries carrying on a slave trade. In Sierra Leone
there was also a base at Freetown to land freed ex-slaves - some of whom had fought on the British side in the American War of Independence and were taken from Nova Scotia. Then
there were bases for "legitimate" trade. These grew
from Lagos in Nigeria (a former Portuguese base), Accra in Ghana and Gambia.
In many cases the coastal base was declared a Colony (sovereign
British territory), and the interior lands were declared a Protectorate.
In the 1890s British troops pushed inland using the new technologies
of steam, telegraphs and machine guns (and Quinine to prevent
Malaria) until they reached the borders of the French territories.
The Berlin Conference (1884) on Colonial matters carved up Africa
and gave each of the European powers their own sections. Thus
Britain ended with territories in East, West and Southern Africa.

British farmers and business men settled in some of them:
Kenya, Rhodesia and South Africa.

The last major conquest of the British was South Africa, where their armies fought not
just the "natives" but the descendants of the Dutch
settlers at the Cape. The wars with the Boers created dissension
at home, where many saw the conquest as greed and imperial over-reach.
The conquest of the Sudan
in 1895 was one of the last wars of expansion - Winston Churchill
took part in the last British cavalry charge there. This war
derived from Britain's control of Egypt. The Egyptian ruler claimed
Sudan and Britain was making good that claim. Sudan was therefore
ruled as a joint British-Egyptian territory - a Condominium.

After the first world war those African colonies that had
been awarded to Germany
were mostly given to Britain - Namibia (South West Africa to South Africa),
Cameroon (parts), and Togo (part) and Tanganyika (German East Africa).

Oceania
The Royal Navy and East India Company ships visited many small
islands in all the oceans. Many of these too were declared Sovereign
British territory or signed treaties making them Protectorates.
Some of them were useful as supply bases for water and food.
A British presence there also denied their use to other empires
- mainly the French. During the wars with the French several
islands were conquered from the French. Mauritius is the best example

At its height the Empire as an economic community was also
influential in areas not formally ruled by Britain. After China
the most important of these was Argentina. Britain was the source of capital
for developing the country, especially the railways, which were
owned by London investors and there were many British managers
in Argentine businesses. Britain gained by importing the beef
from the Pampas. British capital also built the railways in Colombia
(though to too small a gauge). (Compare with the way modern China
proposes to build a railway in Colombia and many other territories).

Films by Alexander Korda
Propaganda for the ethos of empire - the aristocratic officer
class.

The Drum (1938)
about the Northwest Frontier (UK version)

The Four Feathers(1939) about the conquest of the Sudan
and the heroism of the "Officer Class". Preposterous plot but good for atmosphere.

DVD The man who would be king-
satire on the empire's conquests from a story by Rudyard Kipling

Der Mann, der König sein wollteDan Snow
- Empire of the Sea - how the navy built the empireGeorge
Orwell - Burmese Days
A novel based on his experiences of being a colonial policeman

Burmese Days (Penguin Modern Classics)
See also his essay "Shooting an elephant" in his collected
writings.More literature about the empire. See
the works of : W. Somerset Maugham; Joseph Conrad;Fawn Brodie - The Devil Drives,
life of Richard Burton

The world population as the British and other European empires
grew was less than 1000 million. Britain itself was no more than
5 million. This certainly makes it remarkable that such a small
country has had such an effect on the world.

When considering the history of the empire these figures must
always be in mind. For one thing it explains why Britain's military
forces were always limited and why mercenaries were employed
so much - for example the German troops who fought much of the
American war of independence. Quite a large proportion of the
population was drafted into the navy, via such means as the Press
Gang.

The Indian Empire was conquered by Indian troops with British
officers.

How was the British Empire ruled?
In each territory there was a Governor, representing the Crown
(the monarch), that is the British government. He was appointed
by and answerable to a British cabinet member: the Secretary
for India; or the Colonial Secretary. In London there were two
ministries: the India Office; the Colonial Office (founded in
1801, by splitting it off from the Home Office). The India Office
replaced the Honourable East India Company after the Indian Mutiny
of 1857.

In the territory there was a civil service. In the provinces
or districts there were British officials - District Officers
or Commissioners (In Nigeria the local officials were District
Officers; in other African colonies they were District Commissioners).
In India the civil service showed its origin in the East India
Company. The local commissioners were known as Collectors, showing
that their original function had been to collect the taxes for
the Company. The lowest level of administration in Africa were
the Chiefs and sub-chiefs who headed Locations. In some other
colonies the lowest government employee might be the Village
Headman. (See Chinua Achebe Arrow of God for the difficulties these appointments
caused local people).

British colonial civil servants were encouraged to learn local
languages, and received extra pay on passing competence tests.
They were expected to study carefully the needs of their subjects.
One result of the intensive
study of Latin and Greek in the Public Schools was a much greater
proficiency with other languages than modern students have.

Rory StewartCritics have accused this new breed of administrators (the UN
representatives in such places as Afghanistan) of neo-colonialism.
But in fact their approach is not that of a nineteenth century
colonial officer. Colonial administration may have been racist
and exploitative but they did at least work seriously at the
business of understanding the people they were governing. They
recruited people prepared to spend their entire careers in dangerous
provinces of a single alien nation. They invested in teaching
administrators and military officers the local language. They
established effective departments of state, trained a local elite
and continued the countless academic studies of their subjects
through institutes and museums, royal geographical societies and
royal botanical gardens. They balanced the local budget and generated
fiscal revenue because if they didn't their home government would
rarely bail them out. If they failed to govern fairly the population
would mutiny.

(He says the UN people seldom understand the people they govern,
and don't stay long enough).

Very early in the development of colonial administration the
Governor appointed a group of officials to assist him in making
laws for the colony. This was the Legislative Council (LegCo).
It was from this organisation that the parliaments of the states
grew. Once the decision was taken to evolve the colony towards
self-government the LegCo began to include "native"
members, at first appointed, later elected. There was usually
a period when members appointed by the governor (official members)
outnumbered the elected members. Later the elected members became
a majority. At this point the governor would appoint local members
as Ministers.

The next stage was Responsible Self-government when the governor
ceased to exercise day to day control but had the power to suspend
or abolish the assembly, dismiss the government and in general
act as a back stop. In such colonies the Governor would retain
control of the army and police, and would continue to deal with
London. The best example of the use of this power was in British
Guiana (Guyana)
where the governor refused to allow Cheddi Jagan to become Chief
Minister on the grounds that the United States believed he was
a communist, (illustrating the fact that the British Empire had
become subordinate to the United States).

The final stage was complete independence when the Assembly
became an imitation of the British House of Commons and the title
of the Governor changed to Governor-General, representing the
Monarch, but acting only on the advice of the local government.
This was the process originally devised for Australia, New Zealand,
Canada and South Africa (the so-called White Commonwealth). On
independence in the early Dominions the head of state was still
the Monarch represented by a Governor General. Nowadays this
official is always a native Australian, Canadian or other and
has the same powers as the Monarch (that is, almost none). The
same method was applied to India and the African colonies. Almost
all of these colonies declared themselves Republics, with the
head of state becoming a President. In India the President has
a similar role to the Governor-General - ceremonial head but
not head of government. In former African colonies the President
is usually also head of government.

But in subsequent history many African ex-colonies abandoned
the Parliamentary system and became ruled by military dictators
who came to power by means of a military coup.

In India there were two types of territory: those ruled directly
by the British (British India); those ruled Indirectly. Indirect
Rule was the system by which the local ruler (Maharajah,
Rajah, Nawab, Sultan etc.) continued in place but after making a treaty
with the British had agreed to follow British policy on the "advice"
of a British Resident official. This method was also used in
other territories, such as Uganda and Nigeria - in both these
cases by Sir Frederick (later Lord) Lugard who set up the administrations.

In most African former colonies the local agents of the government
continue to be known as District Commissioners but are now answerable
to the local government.

About 1000 British civil servants of the Indian Civil Service
(ICS) ruled the whole of India (about 300 million people). Of
course they also had a large military force to enforce their
rule. This consisted of British troops and a much larger Indian
Army of locally recruited troops under British officers. The
same was true of all other colonies. Thus in Africa there were
local armies, known as the King's African Rifles.

How did the British Empire end?
The colonies of settlement went first. Australia, New Zealand,
Canada and South Africa were given local governments based on
the British pattern, with a locally elected House of Commons
and local ministers, answerable to the Governor. They were labelled
the Dominions.
The process of independence was completed after the first world
war with the Statute of Westminster (1930), which recognised
their independence but some of them, Australia for example, had
signed the Versaille Treaty in 1919. Even in the second world
war they cooperated closely with Britain and sent troops in both
world wars. After 1945 their interests diverged from Britain,
though there continued to be regular meetings of Heads of Government,
in what has since become an institution of the Commonwealth (CHOGM
= Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting).

The Empire grew originally because the British had better
weapons than the "natives". This was mainly because
Britain had more advanced technology - Europe in general began
to surpass the rest of the world from about the 17th century.
It was also because the British state was better organised than
those states where the British were trading.

"The Plain
fact is that we have got
the Gatling gun and they have not."
Hilaire Belloc (from "The Modern Traveller")Gatling gun in Afghan war

Some parts at least of the lands occupied by the British were
immensely profitable: especially the sugar islands and India.
Those with the better weapons could decide the terms of trade.
That is, they could control the prices in such a way that the
producers in India were paid less than they would in a free market. Wealth passed from India to
the home country (and of course from the slave-worked Sugar Islands).

DrugsAll the European Empires were to some extent the result of
drug trades. The first substance traded was nutmeg, used by the
rich in medieval times; the second was sugar, a substance that
humans can live perfectly well without, or with very small amounts.
The next was tobacco whose bad effects were only fully recognised
in the 20th century (though James the first of England wrote
a pamphlet against the smoke). Finally, the British found the
trade in opium from their Indian lands very profitable when sold
in China. To some extent this trade was replaced by tea. Perhaps
coffee is also a drug trade - said to have been discovered by Sufi mystics in the Yemen, wishing to stay awake. By the end of the 20th century the
newer drug trades - Cocaine and Heroin, though still immensely
profitable, were conducted not by states but by criminal organisations.

By the beginning of the 20th century the European technological
advantages were diminishing fast. Weapons for resistance were
getting cheaper. Guerrilla
war was becoming easier. The subjects were becoming educated
(missionaries and government itself encouraged modern western
schools). Undisturbed rule of such an empire needed acquiescence
on the part of the ruled. Gradually that acquiescence was withheld.
In India from the time of the Amritsar Massacre (1919) the educated
group ceased to accept British rule as inevitable.

Organisations to resist British rule started in Ireland as
well as in India - indeed Ireland had resistance from early in
the 18th century. The Indian National Congress was the first
of the non-Irish movements. In Africa resistance started later,
and first in South
Africa soon after the formation of the Union of South Africa
(1910). In the other African colonies it began with the end of
the second world war when the African soldiers returned home,
bringing with them their experiences of helping the British fight
other Europeans and losing their awe of the "white man".
Moreover, in Britain itself there were always people opposed
to the empire, even as it was being established.

Perhaps equally important was the fact that the Empire was
no longer profitable. It was in the 18th and 19th centuries when
the plunder was at its most profitable. After that the costs
of ruling the territories rose and the wealth available to extract
diminished in comparison with the wealth produced by the new
industries in Britain, except perhaps in South Africa and other
territories with important mines, such as Malaya.

Incidentally, there is the question of whether the British
people who worked in the later Empire grew rich. In fact, from
the 1890s onward, salaries of ordinary British people in India,
were little more than they could earn in Britain. India was no
longer the source for building palaces like those in the 18th
century.

By 1945 the home country itself was bankrupt from having fought
the second world war. The costs of the empire were rising, not
least because of the threat of guerrilla wars. India, the core
of the empire, was by 1945 nearly ungovernable. The Indians had
been promised self-government (Dominion status) during the war, to encourage
recruitment into the Indian Army and support for Britain's side
of the second world war.

In the years after 1945 there was a series of colonial wars.
In Malaya the
British retook control of the country from the Japanese occupiers
but the local people no longer accepted the right of the British
to rule them. The Chinese community imitated Mao Tse Tung and
formed a guerrilla army. In Kenya there was an uprising mainly
over land ownership. In both cases the wars led to independence
in the 1960s. But another result was that the British governing
group realised the Empire was now too expensive to hold and policy
changed towards preparing rapidly for independence for all the
colonies.

The last colonial war was in Aden where the British had to leave by helicopter,
leaving no state behind.

In the 19th century Britain had been the source of capital
for investment. In 1945 there was no such source. Thus the drive
for making the colonies independent was a mixture of financial
necessity, military necessity and idealism. The last came from
those in Britain who campaigned for the "natives"
to have the same democratic rights as British citizens at home.

There was also the rise of the Superpowers, the United States and the
Soviet Union. By comparison Britain was a medium power.

Burma was the
first to become independent. India
was next (1947) being split into four states: India, Pakistan
(later itself split when Bangladesh left) and Sri Lanka.

In Africa more independences occurred with Sudan first (1954) at the insistence of Egypt
which shared the sovereignty. The first Black African state was
Ghana (1957)
formerly the Gold Coast, used as a model for the rest. After
that all the west African states went, followed by East and Central
Africa. Rhodesia,
because of its settlers, was the most trouble, as the settlers
refused to accept majority rule - much as the French settlers
in Algeria behaved. But the settler state of Kenya followed,
after a war of independence. The process finished with Hong Kong
(1997). There are no plans for the remaining territories (scroll
down) unless they demand independence.

Suez War
The event that showed the British Empire was at an end was probably
the 1956 Suez War. Britain, France and Israel had conspired to
invade Egypt to regain control of the Suez Canal. They were stopped
by the United States (and Egyptian resistance), proving that
only decisions by the Superpowers were important. But the resistance
also showed that the "natives" could not now be ignored
as Kalashnikovs were cheap and easy to obtain.

The result was the loss of British influence in the Middle
East - especially the loss of control of Iraq where a revolution
against the king installed by the British occurred, leading to
the Baath party victory. Sir John Glubb had to give up his command
of the army of Jordan, the Arab Legion. The leading western power
became the United States which took over some of Britain's influence.

After the British Empire
The Roman and Near Eastern world of 2000 years ago is known to
historians as the Hellenistic world. The common language among
many different peoples was Greek, following the conquests of
Alexander the Great.

Our modern world is similar. It is the post-British Empire
world and the common language is English, which continues to
be used as the language of government in many of the successor
states, along with the procedures of the British Civil Service.
As with the break up of many other past empires there have been
numerous post-Imperial wars and disputes. All of the countries
in the list below have the British Empire as part of their past.

1922 was the peak of the territorial spread of the British
Empire when the League of Nations mandated territories, the former
colonies of Germany and Turkey, were added. The first independences,
Ireland and Egypt, were about to occur.

The Commonwealth is an organization of former British colonies.
Its main institution is a regular meeting of heads of government.
There is a Secretariat in London. They share the experience of
having been colonized, the English language and English law and
civil service methods. But they do not all share democracy or
human rights. Many are or have been dictatorships in which the
colonial style of government is continued with suspensions of
habeas corpus and censorship.

Cameroon and Mozambique have since joined. Ireland may
rejoin on settlement of the Northern Ireland problem (probably
never).

Rwanda joined
in November 2008, although never ruled by Britain,
perhaps motivated by the desire of the president to distance
himself from France.Algeria, Yemen, Sudan, Israel
and the Palestinian
territories are said to be seeking to join in November 2007 too.

South Africa rejoined at the ending of Apartheid . Fiji was suspended after adopting
a racially exclusive constitution. Zimbabwe has been suspended
because of its lack of democracy. Pakistan has been a member,
and a non-member and is at present in.

The remaining territories have been renamed British Overseas
Territories (like those of France). Although the people have
no representation in the British Parliament they now have full
citizenship rights (from 21 May 2002) and the right to visit
Britain. Each one, except Ascension and BIOT, has an elected
local government.
These are:

One of the legacies of Empire is perhaps the British Broadcasting Corporation's World Service,
founded in 1932 as the Empire Service, which may be one of the
most influential post-Imperial institutions. It provides a news
service independent of the individual former colonial countries
- often the only source of impartial news.
Another is the game of Cricket, now spreading into some other
areas, including Afghanistan and Cuba. The British Council as
a cultural and educational organisation is also influential,
within the former empire and elsewhere, too.

Anglosphere

Some neo-conservative people in the United States are
beginning to talk of "the Anglosphere". Is this an
embryonic English-speaking Empire - the merger of the British
Empire and the United States that George Orwell imagined in his
novel "1984"? Perhaps it is a passing short time idea,
the result of the 2003 war in Iraq when France, Germany, Russia
and many other countries refused to support the US-led invasion
of Iraq, without the agreement of the United Nations.

Clearly, Britain and the United States have been close allies
since the second world war when Winston Churchill realised the
survival of Britain needed the support of the United States to
defeat Nazi Germany. However, in recent years, especially since
the Iraq war, many
people in Britain protest that the British government appears
to be subordinate to the United States rather than protecting
British interests.

Since the independence of the former British colonies Britain
itself has become a medium sized European power, and in comparison
to the United States, much less powerful. Other English speaking
states, such as Australia, have also become close allies with
the US. Australia has US bases on its territory. Thus militarily
the US has replaced the British Empire as the only power with
military forces in every part of the globe. Will it last? Have
the enthusiasts for having an empire in the US noticed the new
conditions that make it much harder to rule people against their
will, perhaps demonstrated by the difficulties the US has in
controlling Iraq? They forget that during the period of all the
European colonial Empires force, often brutal, was needed to
keep power. (A good example is the ferocious response of the
British to the Indian Mutiny - war crimes on a huge scale were
committed.) The American wars in Vietnam and Iraq show that brutal
military force remains the only method to hold an Empire - but
that it no longer "works". In any case the declining
relative economic power of the US does not suggest now is the
time for an empire as Western Hegemony
itself may be coming to an end, to be replaced by global cooperation
in a world of equals - or possibly domination by new powers such as China. The US clearly cannot afford both civilian investment and its extremely expensive military.

The historian cannot answer questions like this but only attempt
to describe what happened. Nor can the historian explain why
the Empire occurred - unless perhaps with the aid of Ibn Khaldun's insights.

It's not historians who can discuss such questions, but Moral
Philosophers - a discipline taught in French schools but not
usually in British or American schools.

In its favour perhaps one can say that the common experience
of being ruled by the British inadvertently prepared many peoples
for the world we now live in - of contact between peoples and
a common world culture, something inevitable from modern technology.
Also English has become a common language of an area greater
than any other language in history. Along with the language went
the procedures of the British Civil Service. A blessing, or a
curse?

One might add of course that the answer to such a question
is bound to differ according to the experience of the questioner.
For example, people of British descent may well feel that, as
the prosperity of Britain - or at least its upper classes - in
the 18th century and after was largely due to the profits made
from the Empire, therefore from their point of view it was a
good thing. But the descendants of those from whom the profits
were made may feel differently about that. The profits were made
by slavery,
especially in the West Indies, and from driving down the price
of local produce in India and the Far East. The experience of
the empire in India was to demote India's position in the league
of worldwide prosperity as its industries atrophied in favor
of, for example, Lancashire's cotton industry. The main purpose
of any empire is to drive down the prices in the colonised areas
in favor of the "Home Country". See this article for some details.

But even British people might wonder whether in the long run
Empire was a good thing for Britain. In the 20th century it has
been suggested by some economists that easy access to not very
demanding markets made British industry complacent and reluctant
to innovate. According to this point of view only the independence
of the colonies made Britain more competitive again - though
the later disappearance of British manufacturing industry suggests
the loss was quite damaging. Now, such businesses as the British
Steel industry and Landrover have come into the ownership of
companies based in India. Is the former Empire now reversing
the relationship?

More serious than the economic effects may have been the cultural
effects. British people liked to believe that they had brought
the benefits of "western civilisation" to the "natives".
But many of the colonised peoples found their own cultures denigrated
and even destroyed. For example, in Africa, society was organised
around polygamy, to cope with the greater death rate of males.
The Christian missionaries, protected by the imperial power,
almost always condemned the practice (despite its being common
in the Old Testament), leaving the extra wives unsupported, and
probably giving rise to the current sexual promiscuity that causes
a high rate of HIV
infection. In Botswana,
the missionaries caused the king to suppress the initiation schools
by which the young were taught the customs of the people. The
loss of this means of education is probably a contributor to
the collapse in sexual morals, as the western type schools did
not deal with these subjects, that included control of fertility.
(Migrant Labor to South Africa by which the men went off to semi-slavery
in the mines was also a contributor.)

In respect of India
the claim of superior civilisation was also rather dubious. M.K.Gandhi,
notoriously replied when asked a daft question by the Press on
his arrival in Britain for negotiations: "What do you think
of western civilisation?" (Although a qualified Middle Temple
Lawyer, trained in London, he was wearing traditional Sadhu's
clothing). He said: "I think it would be a good idea".
Perhaps he had a point.

How far did the cultural changes caused by empire make possible
the world ecological
crisis of runaway population
growth and destruction of the forests and other natural resource
systems?

Some of the colonial people migrated to Britain so that there
are now communities of people from India, Pakistan, the West
Indies and in fact every former British territory. This has affected
the culture of Britain itself, probably as much as Britain affected
its colonies.

Take a look at Doris Lessing's account of the European expansion
in her SF novel "Shikasta"
(History of Shikasta vol. 3012- the Century of Destruction) and
also her novel in the same series: "The Sentimental Agents..."
about the theory of empires. Her "Sirian empire" appears
to be based on the British Empire.

Rule by the British suppressed many local conflicts, and their
departure released many of these. The states formed from some
colonies were inhabited by people who had had few common interests
before the colonial period. Some of them had been traditional
enemies. Post-colonial wars have occurred in:

How did the British Empire differ from ancient Rome?
British statesmen of the 19th century liked to think of themselves
as Romans. Their statues tend to be dressed in Roman togas. At
school they had studied Greek and Latin as the main subjects.
They began to think of the wide area of the planet under their
rule as a sort of re-birth of the Roman empire. But nevertheless
the British Empire was different in important ways. Rome had
been conquered by direct military force. When a new city or province
was conquered by the Roman army the conquered people were made
into slaves to work for Romans for nothing. The lands of the
conquered cities were given to Romans - at first to all citizens,
but later, as with the conquered Carthage, land and slaves going
only to the ruling aristocracy. The main weakness of the Roman
empire had been that it collapsed when its military forces failed
and the Romans failed to trade with the wider empire. The core
of the empire was not an economic and trading enterprise. Its
central economic fact was tribute - theft at the threat of the
military. The British empire had been the result of trade. Although
the slave trade was essentially theft, trade in other areas did
have some elements of mutual benefit.

Whereas the British empire was not so much like Rome it was
more like Venice which had been a trading empire and its influence
had grown with the money its merchants made from trading with
the eastern Mediterranean. Venice of course declined when trade
shifted to the Atlantic after Columbus. Britain left its empire
when it was no longer profitable.

Having said that one must remember the brutality with which
the Indian uprising was suppressed - as bad as many of the atrocities
committed by the Romans. The behaviour of the British at the
end of the Kenya
occupation was bad.

What would ibn
Khaldun have had to say about the British Empire?
I think he would notice that it was the work of a fairly small
group - the oligarchy
that formed the governing group of England, and then Britain,
from the 17th century onward. These were the landowners and aristocracy
and the financiers of the City of London. They had the "Group
Feeling" Khaldun proposed, and transmitted it to the population
as a whole. Those who made money in India and from the slave
plantations of the West Indies built large country palaces, now
exhibited as the "Stately Homes". They also helped
finance the Industrial Revolution. During the existence of the
Empire many people shared in the group feeling, expressed as
patriotism, and a feeling of superiority, and the belief that
the empire was a Good Thing. To some extent this group feeling
was also transmitted to the people ruled in the colonies. This
was part of the motivation of the West Indians who migrated to
Britain during the 1950s and 60s.

In the 19th century the Group Feeling perhaps was propagated
in the educational system. Most of the administrators and military
leaders came from that group of people who went to the specialised
boarding schools in Britain known as the Public Schools. The
elite went on to the universities of Oxford or Cambridge. Thus
they were known to each other from an early age.

Was it a consequence of the end of empire, or a cause, that
this group feeling seems to have dissipated at the end? The people
in the colonies wanted an end to British rule and the rulers
themselves largely agreed. The first world war damaged this ruling
group in two ways: many were killed in the slaughter of the battles,
especially at the Somme (1916); the masses ceased to respect
them because of the incompetence shown in these battles. Perhaps
in the 1920s and 1930s the absence of the brightest and best
was shown by the low quality of the rulers of that period.

The last time that old ruling group - Churchill was the grandson
of the Duke of Marlborough - controlled things was in the second
world war, but that war killed off the empire and they seem to
have consciously handed on the responsibility to the United States.

Thus there is something in common with the Ottoman Empire which began with a small clan
of Turks that also transmitted its group feeling to larger and
larger populations until it ruled much of the Middle East, north
Africa and eastern Europe and then decayed in the 19th century.

At the height of the empire many people liked to think that
"god" had encouraged the British to rule the world.
But Rudyard Kipling, even at Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee
(1897 - 50 years before the Independence of India) when the empire
seemed eternal, warned that all empires are ephemeral with his
poem: Recessional. Now, in 2012, we can see he
was right.

Far-called our navies melt away -
On dune and headland sinks the fire -
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget - lest we forget!

Written by a former Education Officer in Kenya, Botswana
and Nigeria.The author has also studied in Uganda and travelled in Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Lesotho, Swaziland, Ghana. He has worked in Iraq and South Yemen. Other travels in Australia and Canada.